


Missing

by LadyBraken



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drunkenness, Friendship/Love, M/M, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 01:28:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21401899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBraken/pseuds/LadyBraken
Summary: Francis turned his back to Blanky to pour himself a glass of whiskey.Blanky walked over him and passed his arms around the Captain’s waist. His chin tucked itself on the man’s shoulder, lips ghosting on his neck. They stood like that for a long, long time until Francis melted against him. The Captain’s hand went to cover Blanky’s and held on it, his thumb caressing over the back of his hand.“You need to stop the drink.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Thomas Blanky
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2019





	Missing

The whole meeting had been a disaster. 

It had hurt, truly. The words, the humiliation. The frustration of being ignored. Things Blanky knew too much. Things that hurt Francis still. 

They want home, on Terror. The walk was long, and silent. Blanky and Francis walked close together, and if their fingers brushed behind their cloaks, there was no one to notice. 

Once in his cabin, Francis quickly dismissed Jopson. Blanky nodded to the lad on his way out. He was smart enough not to bother them for the evening.

Francis turned his back to Blanky to pour himself a glass of whiskey.

Blanky walked over him and passed his arms around the Captain’s waist. His chin tucked itself on the man’s shoulder, lips ghosting on his neck. They stood like that for a long, long time until Francis melted against him. The Captain’s hand went to cover Blanky’s and held on it, his thumb caressing over the back of his hand. 

“You need to stop the drink.” said Blanky. Francis hummed but his hand didn’t leave the glass. “It makes you full of shit, and you know it.”

The Captain ignored him.

“Will you stay tonight?” whispered Francis. “I don’t have the energy for…  _ that _ , but… I’d like you to be here.”

Blanky chuckled. “Don’t ye worry, old man. I’ll hold you all night - and all the others too.”

The noise Francis made was between a laugh and a sob. Blanky held on tighter.

  
  


—-

Francis was alone, leaning on the edge of the ship, staring at the sky, his pipe in his hand. The wind howls, the night is dark. The ice trapped them already, creaking around them with a doom Blanky knows is coming. A doom Francis knew too. 

Blanky walked to him. Leaned next to him. 

“I ain’t sleepy either.” Francis said softly.

“I wish sleeping was as simple as closing your eyes.”

And Francis talked about the reindeers. Talked about the confused little things - the stupid things they had done a long time ago. They laughed - and how good it was the hear Francis laugh after all this time. Even breathy, even coughy, even with that nervous edge that screamed that tears weren’t far. He laughed, for Blanky, he laughed. And Blanky, poor fool that he was, couldn’t have loved his Captain more than at this moment. 

But then, the smile slipped from his Captain's lips, and just like that, the darkness had taken over. 

“Is that us? Now? Confused, out of their depths?”

  
  


“We saw worse than that, you and me. And I know you saw much worse south, with Sir James.”

“This is different.”

Blanky looked at the dark sky, listened to the howling wind. He was feeling the ice around them like most men felt the air in their lungs. “Aye. You trusted Ross and you trusted Parry.”

His gaze landed on Francis. Like ice, like air in the lungs. 

“Have you gone clairvoyant? Or am I not doing half the job I think I am concealing my thoughts?”

“No… It’s just that I know you.”

Francis eyes shone in the arctic night. His lips pulled slightly, almost imperceptibly, in the most secretive smile. The smile Francis had mastered for Thomas, and Thomas alone. The smile that said so much while pretending not to be there. 

Blanky wished he didn’t have to say these things anymore. He wished Francis would believe them, always. 

“What will it do to us, the ice?” To us- of course. Of course Francis had understood. “There’s no lead to be found. We are going to stay another winter here.”

“With a thaw to clear last winter’s ice, it will start to...pile up. High. The boat will be squeezed like in the arms of a mother.”

“It pushes the boat up.”

“I have seen boats fall to nearly thirty feet.”

Francis looked at the ice, a worried frown between his eyes. 

“Can we survive that amount of pressure?

“If it traps us up, yeah. We can go around it- but it can also drag us under.”

“Snap our beams and crush us at the waist.”

Blanky smiled, and put his hand on the Captain’s forearm. A bold move, he knew, out in the open.

“Let’s pray for the former, then.”  _ No need for black mood here, lad _ . 

Blanky’s hand lingered. There was no one here.

It was just them. Just them and the ice.

They turned towards the ice.Blanky’s hand stayed where it was. Where it should be. 

\---

It wasn’t the dismissal that had hurt Blanky. It wasn’t even the order - the fact that he had been sent to injury if not worse. 

_ Mr Blanky _ . 

Like he didn’t mattered - like he never had. 

“He’s sick with it, now.” he had said to MacDonald before rushing outside. He was sick. The fucking idiot had drunk himself into idiocy. But Blanky knew better than to protest. Francis, like that, was unpredictable. A stranger to all - cruel. 

Blanky had seen other cruel Captains. He had held an axe against the head of one of them. 

He walked out in the snow. He had seen worse. He had survived worse. 

—-

Blanky woke up in pain. No, not in pain. In the peculiar sensation of feeling pain that should be there, but that had been hidden behind drugs.

It took him a moment to remember he was missing a leg. He took him much less time to notice that Francis wasn’t at his side.

Macdonald knew, before he even asked. The man was smart and perceptive - one of the rare Blanky would have trusted with Francis’s life.. Of course he knew. 

“He’s sobering.” he said, “in his cabin. What happened to you gave him a shock.”

“Get me to him.”

“You need to rest your leg-”

“Get me to him.”

It took almost two days to convince the doctor. Perhaps it was for the best. Blanky wanted to see Francis because he worried, of course, but there was anger too underneath. Anger at Francis for not listening to him, for hurting himself, for ignoring his warnings, after all these years.

And yet. 

Francis was laying on his bunk, feverish, trembling. Jopson let Blanky enter the room and left them alone.

Francis didn’t wake. 

Blanky sighed and hopped unto a chair. He stared at his old friend, like he had done so many times in the years they had known each other. Francis was his dearest friend, of course. He was his lover, his confidant, the man had held his daughter first after her birth. The man he trusted above all. This stupid, wonderful fool. Blanky could have hit him.

But there was a frown of pain on Francis’s face. The Captain moaned in pain, hands clutching his blankets. 

“Hush, old man.” grumbled Blanky, “Esther’s gonna kill the two of us when we get home, y’know?”

Francis suddenly rolled on the side of the bed to puke in the basin his steward had thoughtfully left closed at hand. Unfazed, Blanky put his hand on his friend’s back, the other pushing his hair out of the way. He didn’t quite know what to do.

So he hummed. A little thing, roughly breathed out, like he had done for the girls when they were little.

The frown between Francis’s eyes smoothed, and quickly, he had fallen asleep. 

—-

The man Blanky saw at Carnivale was changed. The second he saw him, Francis walk and took him his arms in a way that could almost be seen as brotherly. “Thomas…” he whispered hoarsely as if the ice-master was the summer sun pointing at the horizon. 

Thomas patted his back with a hearty laugh. 

Then, it all went up in flames. 

\---

Blanky held out as much as he could. He walked, and walked, and walked. He felt Francis's arm against his more time than he could count, his fingers checking his pulse frantically. 

They shared a tent, when the ills started to fall on the ground like flies.

Each night, Blanky could feel_ it_ closer. Each night, Francis held him tighter.

Blanky kept everything he could for himself. Tuunbaq running across the tundra, the warm touch of his friend feeling like home on his skin, the cold of the stones against his back, the darkness spreading in his mind like the infected veins on his leg. On his hip.

He kept on, and on.

Francis didn't cry when Fitzjames died. Blanky knew he had no more tears to shed. Knew he had held the man as he chocked on his own blood. Knew he couldn't make him suffer that again.

"I can't loose two friends the same day."

It was raw, his was crushing. "At least love me enough for that, Francis."

Francis had stared, a second. Stared with all the quiet pain that brewed inside the man. They had embraces, held onto eachotherone last time. The Terrible tenderness of a tentative touch - afraid to hurt, pressing to live. When the sun didn't warm them, this was like the blaze of the Carnivale.

"I'm gonna need forks."

"Forks?!"

\---

Blanky sat, alone, in front of the endless ice. The endless sea. The North-West passage.

He was warm. He was furious. He was full of the leaking life he had already left behind.

He laughed.


End file.
